nuncle

   A vocative form of ‘uncle’, possibly arising from a false division of ‘an uncle’. It was in use by the sixteenth century and therefore available to Shakespeare, who used it in rather a special way. Only one character makes use of the term, the Fool in King Lear, and he uses it only to address his royal master.

   The word was used by other seventeenthcentury playwrights such as Dryden, however, and continued to be used until at least the nineteenth century in rural dialects. It developed a pet-form ‘nunky’, while in Thomas Hardy’s The Trumpet Major it appears as ‘nunc’ when used by Festus Derriman to address his uncle Benjamin.